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Mharrander Dorolkh
Mharrander Dorolkh is the full and proper name of this Netherese archwizard, who was born in -1546 DR in Tzindylspar, to a lowborn merchant family of Netheril who traveled tirelessly fetching mundane supplies and items for various arcanists. He was one of some forty children, and his father, Surrane Dorolk, eventually sold Mharrander (who’d exhibited a natural aptitude to ‘feel’ the presence and strength of magic) to an archwizard, one Kazindrol - - a cruel, bald, bearded arcanist who exulted in taking beast-shape and hunting, rending, and devouring other creatures. Kazindrol sought immortality through the ability to send his mind intact into beast body after beast body, possessing and controlling all he entered, and prided himself on being able to inhabit and command two bodies at once (he saw this not only as essential to avoid dying in a slain body, but as a demonstration of his superior force of intellect). Kazindrol had need of many assistants, but slew or transformed those he saw as growing into threats to himself. Mharrander never achieved this status, being always too obedient, eagerly obliging, and paltry in training-at-Art, and so was on hand when six of Kazindrol’s apprentices all attacked their master at once. The spellbattle was swift, spectacular, and deadly, ending with the top of Kazindrol’s tower shattered and Kazindrol and four of his apprentices reduced to ashes, a fifth caught in a spell-cycle that kept him helplessly transforming into a bewilderingly rapid sequence of different creatures (all of them wounded and pinned under rubble), and a sixth triumphant but ravaged by pain, and lashing out at everything in sight - - including Mharrander, who slew this sixth, snatched all the magical tomes and portable items he could find, and fled (leaving the wounded fifth apprentice to be blamed for everything, when neighbouring arcanists arrived to plunder Kazindrol’s magic). Mharrander took himself far from Netheril, into high mountain caverns, somewhere to the south, where dragons laired. There he studied, soon finding a magic that would allow him to snatch creatures from afar for food, and another that would preserve dead bodies in a stasis field. He soon ringed his caverns with dead, floating beholders (that had perished of natural causes, or been on the verge of doing so, ere his magics plucked them to his presence), to dissuade exploring visitors, and began years of study and mastery. From time to time, as the years passed and the world changed, he emerged to explore and test his magic. First he slew or tamed dragons, and then under cloaks of magical concealment observed what others were up to, concentrating most on fellow Netherese arcanists - - and in particular on those working on longevity magics. Only the human contacts of his explorations, and “feeling involved in unfolding life” through his spyings, kept Mharrander from going insane from sheer loneliness. He took to calling himself just “Ander,” and indulging in mimicry of those he spied upon. He stole such secrets as he dared from archwizards pursuing longevity or immortality, and kept watch over their abodes and doings; whenever one of them perished, Ander swooped in to gather all he could of their magic and research. He sought his own route to immortality or at least longevity through seeking to master regeneration, and in tinkering with “the stuff of flesh” so that parts that did regenerate would not age, but return with the vigor of youth. For many of his organs and tissues, he achieved what he sought, but saw no way to destroy and regenerate his increasingly aging head and brain without dying. So he turned to wraithform magics, and his stasis fields, hoping to buy time until he could find a solution - - or someone else did, that he could seize or steal it from. Such tactics bought him centuries, but no solution offered itself. So at least, reluctantly, he turned to exploring lichdom and its magics, still using the “long sleeps” of stasis fields to buy more time. Ander has more levels than Szass Tam and Khelben, but fewer than Larloch. Of the “comparison trio,” in a one-on-one combat (no legions of allies for his foe) Ander could most easily defeat Szass Tam. He could “take” Khelben if Khelben were ever cut off from the aid of other Chosen and Mystra and Azuth and Mystra’s other divine servants. Larloch would probably mop the floor with Ander, every time. Category:Humans Category:Wizards